Editorial: FEMA, wake up and smell the coffee

Sunday

Jul 27, 2008 at 12:01 AMJul 27, 2008 at 10:46 AM

FEMA should reconsider denying public assistance funds.

Staff reports

Well, here we go again.

In a letter dated Thursday, Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt has made another request to reconsider denying public disaster assistance to Newton, Jasper and Barry counties to cover cleanup and other costs related to the deadly May 10 tornado.

This time, the governor didn’t address his appeal to FEMA. Instead, he went to FEMA’s oversight agency, the federal Division of Homeland Security. And he went straight to the top, addressing the letter to Michael Chertoff, the agency’s director.

You may remember Chertoff came to Southwest Missouri a few days after the tornado and saw the damage first hand.

We hope that makes a difference. It apparently hasn’t to FEMA administrator David Paulison, who also made the tour.

According to the governor and local emergency management chief Gary Roark, the bone of contention seems to be in the amount of per capita impact. While one community, Newtonia, had a staggering per capita impact of $1,666.67 for every man, woman and child, that was not enough. Nor was Granby’s per capita impact of $125.74, or the county’s $99.93 for each and every resident.

Instead of looking at the losses of the three counties affected by the storm, FEMA has looked at all 114 counties in the state of Missouri, coming up with a per capita impact of $1.02, 22 cents short of the margin needed.

And, as we’ve said on these pages time and time again, it’s more than just asinine to use a mathematical formula in determining who gets public sector disaster aid, it’s in violation of a 1988 amendment to the very act that governs federal disaster assistance.

The Stafford Act clearly states “No geographic area shall be precluded from receiving assistance under this act solely by virtue of an arithmetic formula or sliding scale based on income or population.”

“To view this disaster only in terms of the per capita indicator … is to miss the broader impact of the disaster on individual Missourians and their communities,” the governor wrote. “I am concerned that the per capita indicator was the basis for denying our original public assistance request, as well as our subsequent appeal….”

We too are concerned. And we are hopeful that Chertoff encourages the powers that be to wake up and smell the coffee.

FEMA, reconsider your decisions. You’re impacting thousands of lives, each and every one of us in Newton, Jasper and Barry counties. Grant us the public sector declaration, let us haul away our storm debris, and give us the chance to put this tragedy behind us.